


Cool, Like James Dean

by badboy_fangirl



Series: The East of Eden Series [2]
Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-27
Updated: 2014-02-27
Packaged: 2018-01-14 00:22:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1245757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beth always watched old movies with her dad. He loved anything from the '50s, especially James Dean movies. Since there were only three of them, she'd seen them, like, a million times.</p><p> </p><p>  <a href="http://smg.photobucket.com/user/americanoutlaw/media/Walking%20Dead/Bethylugh_zpsadbe525f.jpg.html"></a><br/><img/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Cool, Like James Dean

**Author's Note:**

> Continuation of [Blue Jean Beauty Queen](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1220704).

Beth always watched old movies with her dad. He loved anything from the '50s, especially James Dean movies. Since there were only three of them, she'd seen them, like, a million times.

There was this one day, when Daryl was walking though cell block C that she kind of giggled to herself and Hershel had looked over at her. "What's funny?" he asked.

"Daryl," she whispered, pointing discreetly. "He's cool. Like James Dean, y'know?"

Her daddy had just smiled at her and nodded his head. 

He did know.

 

 

After the first night, Daryl isn't shy anymore. He touches her easily, feverishly, and she welcomes him. In the middle of so much pain, so much sadness, there is _this_ , and it feels amazing. He kisses her breasts, and her stomach, and between her legs. She snickers because it tickles a little, but then he does something, she's not even sure what, and it doesn't tickle anymore; it's the most intense, overwhelming, terrifying moment she's ever experienced, and she cries his name uncertainly.

"What?" he hisses at her, jerking his head up.

"I-it's, just. Too much. I don't know..." She shakes her head, and because there's a full moon shining though the broken rafters of the barn they found for the night, she can make out his eyes.

He looks worried, and she doesn't know what to tell him, so she touches his face with her fingertips. "Keep going," she whispers, because as scary as it is, it's worse thinking he'll stop.

He runs his fingers gently up her thighs, which causes all the muscles in her legs and stomach to tremble helplessly. He whispers a _shhhh_ and then talks her through it a little bit, explaining what he'll do before he does it. His voice is rough, and she can tell that his actions make him feel everything she's feeling, and there's some sort of safety in that. She's not alone here, Daryl's with her, and he wants her to experience something profound.

His lips touch her again, but his hands stay, too. His tongue rubs in soft circles, and she feels like her breaths are keeping time with his strokes. Then his first two fingers stretch up into her, curling a little and she can't stifle the moan that fills her throat and tumbles out of her mouth.

She knows she should be worried about attracting Walkers, but this is uncontainable.

"D-daryl!" she whispers, her hands grabbing at his hair. "Oh, _god_ , Daryl..."

She feels him smile against the inside of her thigh.

 

 

It's days and days (weeks?) before they find Tyreese and Carol, but the day after that they stumble across a camp of strangers. Rick, Carl, Michonne and Maggie are there. 

After Beth and Maggie let go of each other, and once they get their tears under control, Daryl actually hugs her sister, too. It makes Beth cry even more, a sense of happiness that she can't remember feeling in a really long time overwhelming her. Daddy's dead, but Maggie's alive, and her family is reunited, at least in part. She doesn't try to hold Judith right away; Rick and Carl are being greedy about her, and Beth understands.

She has constantly kept her refrain of hope going, telling herself it was for Daryl, but she realizes now, it had been for herself just as much.

The bad part is, as soon as they're all back together, Daryl starts acting completely strange. 

He won't touch her; he'll hardly even look at her.

She wants to yell at him in front of everyone, but she's not stupid. She knows the problem is _everyone_. Not that either of them wants to be without them, but in some ways, it was simpler. When it was just the two of them, the world couldn't do anything but kill them. Now, it might judge them.

Funny thing is, Beth doesn't care. 

She follows him into the woods when he goes hunting for something for them to eat. She barely says his name before he turns on her and snaps, "I'm old enough to be your daddy. We ain't doin' this no more."

Beth stares at him uncomprehendingly and when he tries to walk away, she grabs at his wrist. "You're only old enough to be my daddy if you were a baby when you had me. And who cares, Daryl? We could die tomorrow. You gonna tell me you don't love me, and you don't wanna be with me, when God knows we might only have a little time together?"

"Whattaya think they'll say?" he demands, jerking his head towards where they came from. "They'll--"

"They'll be happy that we're happy," she says, sliding her hand up his arm to catch his elbow and hold him in front of her.

He snorts, and an ugly look comes over his face. "No, they won't, all they'll see is some creeper who took advantage of a little girl." Beth feels her temper explode at that. She's not sure if she's more mad about him calling her a little girl, or calling himself names. Before she can control herself, she smacks his mouth with the open palm of her other hand. While she's still trying to formulate an argument, he jerks his arm free of her grasp and barks, "And who the hell said I love you?" 

She knows it's just to hurt her, it's just to get her to back down, because of all the things she doesn't know, like where her next meal is coming from, and if she'll live to see another day, and if she'll ever get to make _actual_ love with the man she loves in a bed, with clean sheets and all that stuff, the one thing she's certain of is that Daryl Dixon loves her.

It's been in his every touch; in every side-eye he's given her, and most especially when it's quiet between them in the dark, when there is just his breathing and hers, and his fingers drift up and down her arm in a soft caress. She has felt it radiating off his body--heat, warmth that's more than his physical desire for her, and absolute sweetness--in a way she's never seen from him in any other situation. And she's been living with him for almost a year and a half; she knows all his moods, all his personas. 

She's seen James Dean in his walk and the way he fights, but she can see the other part, too. The James Dean who sat on the Ferris wheel with Julie Harris or laid on the bed with Natalie Wood. That's the Daryl who rests in the shadows with her after he's used his mouth or his fingers to make her come, when his lips sweetly press against her forehead or his hand gently touches her hair. 

But here, in this moment, when he's looking at her with a face she doesn't like, with eyes that are hiding the truth from her, all she can do is blink back tears, and press a hand against her trembling lips. It hurts like nothing before in her life, even when she's seen a world up-ended in blood and guts.

She turns and runs, and though she hears him call for her, she can't stop. She just needs to run. Maybe she needs him to chase her.

She doesn't get more than twenty yards when she sees a small herd of Walkers, and screaming, she pivots to run the other way. He's there, almost instantly, taking down three or four in a flurry of movement that allows her to gather her wits. She pulls the knife from her belt and runs back to help. She kills the last two, and then sinks to her knees on the forest floor to wipe the blood from her hands.

She doesn't even realize she's sobbing until he kneels next to her and says in a soft voice, "Beth, shhhh--" but when his arm comes around her shoulders, she shoves him away.

"Leave me alone," she all but yells, and springs back to her feet. She walks away slowly, but determinedly, never looking back.

He doesn't come after her.

 

 

It took her some time to work up the nerve to go down on him.

(She knows that's what it's called, she'd had two other boyfriends who both asked her to do it to them. She never wanted to, though, so she hadn't.)

The first time she moved over him, she thought he was already asleep. They had found a nicer house, with a huge bed in the master bedroom. There were no clean sheets to speak of, but the mattress was in pretty good shape. They had used it well, a pattern falling into place: run from and kill Walkers all day, and then devour each other at night so their sleep was so deep they couldn't remember their dreams. After he collapsed next to her, his arm under her neck, she couldn't fall to sleep herself. All she could think about was taking him in her mouth. She wanted to show him what he meant to her, and that was how they did it best.

Or at least over the last several days, that's what they'd perfected. Touch had come to mean something to her, almost like faith, like the preaching her daddy had done, right up until the end.

He wasn't asleep, though, because as soon as she swung her leg over him and straddled his thighs, his hands had found the bare skin of her hips, and his fingers dug into her painfully. "What're you doin'?" he asked harshly, his head jerking upward. 

(He'd searched the house for condoms, but it had been a fruitless one, as usual. It occurred to her suddenly that he was afraid, and hopeful, at the same time. He wanted it, like she did, but he wasn't willing to take the chance.)

They almost always put their clothes right back on, before they fell to sleep, because they had to be ready to run at any moment, but they hadn't gotten that far that night.

Beth sometimes thought she was willing to dodge the bullet; in those heated moments between them, she ached for something more than what they shared. She wanted to be connected to him as much as possible, but Daryl wouldn't ever let that happen, probably not even if she told him she didn't care anymore.

(Beth still cares, it's just hard to remember that when he touches her.)

"I'm gonna do to you what you did to me," she said quietly.

His head dropped back to the mattress and a small whimper escaped him.

Beth never felt more powerful in her life.

Now, she lies on a small cot with Maggie, whose shoulders shake as she cries for Glenn, for not knowing where he is or if he's even still alive, and Beth rubs small circles against her sister's back. She can't stop thinking about Daryl, and she knows she won't sleep until she talks to him, but she has to wait for Maggie to fall asleep first.

It's very quiet and very dark across their whole camp when she finally tiptoes out of the tent and goes to find him. She knows he's probably on watch, so she's goes hunting near the gates of their sanctuary first. There are no lights, but none of them rely on things like that anymore. 

"Beth?" She hears a whisper, not from a voice she's expecting and she all but runs smack into Carol.

"You seen Daryl?" Beth asks, before Carol can say anything else. She's on a mission and she won't be distracted.

"He just walked down towards the river," Carol juts her chin in the direction she's talking about. "He's with Cooper. They do night rounds in pairs, always."

"Thanks," Beth says, veering off the path and heading for the river.

"You shouldn't go alone--"

"I'm fine, thanks," she calls back, as she starts moving faster. It only takes about five minutes to come up on the sound of his voice; it's a low rumble, but it's been her nightly lullaby for weeks now. She's got a frequency tuned right to him.

That's why this has got to work; she's gonna be James Dean this time.

He spins around when her footsteps alert him to her presence. The guy he's with--Cooper--isn't someone Beth has met formally, and she doesn't really care to now. He's standing at least ten feet from Daryl, which gives them the bare minimum on privacy. (Not that she's concerned about that.) So she just marches up to him, guided by starlight and a large opening just past a small copse of trees. "What the fuck…?" he breathes, but she puts a finger to his lips because she's close enough to touch him.

He takes a shaky breath.

"I just wanted to tell you, it's okay. If it's over, it's okay. Just, don't start ignoring me, okay? Or actin' funny, because, you're my best friend, and I need you. Okay?" She stares hard into his eyes, and he doesn't look away.

He swallows, a loud sound out there in the open and Cooper says, "Who's that?" and Beth just stands up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. "I'll see you tomorrow," she whispers, but not before Daryl nods his agreement.

Beth turns and walks away, but she's never felt him closer.

(She's sure her daddy's watching over them, and he approves.)


End file.
